Is it worth it to do a full shutdown of Windows 8/10 from time to time

[Pawelk198604]

I've heard that it's good occasionally make full windows shutdown (with holding SHIFT key while clicking shutdown option)

Does is true?    

Edited June 12, 2016 by Pawelk198604

[Camacha]

30 minutes ago, Pawelk198604 said:

I've heard that it's good occasionally make full windows shutdown (with holding SHIFT key while clicking shutdown option)

Does is true?    

Yes. Even though modern OS' are designed to quickly semi-shut down, doing a full shut down, or rather, full reboot, is not a bad idea. Restarting the computer fresh means you eliminate strange errors that can creep into computers that have been turned on for a while. It also allows Windows to install updates, which is an important part of computer maintenance.

When a computer is acting up: a problem is only a problem if the problem still persists after a reboot

[Nuke]

i shut down every day, or whenever i leave my desk for an extended period of time. cleans up loose processes, swap file (if used), etc. im always paranoid that cosmic rays are flipping my bits.

[vger]

No matter how 'perfect' the OS, there's always the chance of the session becoming unstable with time. So yes. Restart once in a while.

[RainDreamer]

I didn't know about the shift shut down thing, neat!

Edited June 13, 2016 by RainDreamer

[magnemoe]

On 12.6.2016 at 5:23 AM, Camacha said:

Yes. Even though modern OS' are designed to quickly semi-shut down, doing a full shut down, or rather, full reboot, is not a bad idea. Restarting the computer fresh means you eliminate strange errors that can creep into computers that have been turned on for a while. It also allows Windows to install updates, which is an important part of computer maintenance.

When a computer is acting up: a problem is only a problem if the problem still persists after a reboot

This, its not only the os but various programs and drivers might generate problems, I know some programs who might require an reboot for working properly again. 

On the other hand if you have an fairly clean setup like servers have they can easy run for months without reboot. 

[lajoswinkler]

Unless the computer is doing nothing, or something rudimentary and simple all the time, yes. Otherwise, every now and then.

[Majorjim!]

I never understood people leaving their PC on all the time. I shut it down when not using it so it's off 90% of the time. I even pull out the plug from the wall.

[Nuke]

i think the idea is repeated on/off cycles cause all the traces to expand and contract, resulting in metal fatigue that breaks traces. ive never actually seen this happen. computers fail for these *reasons:

 

software (then its not really a failure, nuke the partitions and reinstall if you cant fix it in less than an hour).

power supply. caps age and eventually burst. no matter how well you can account for this you cant run a computer (or most any other electronic device for that matter) without sufficient capacitance for buffering and noise removal. im not beyond recapping a psu (use japanese caps).

the user. no way to fix this. anyone who has done tech support probibly wants to build re-education camps for all those repeat customers who should be living in the woods eating squirrels for a living. the ones who just have no buisness using a computer. like that one guy who wanted me to pre-install banzi buddy on his brand new rig. or the one who backed up shortcuts to his files and then ran the repair disc, then wondered where his data was. the most you can do is turn a profit.

 

*this is just a top 3 and is not intended to be an all inclusive list.

Edited June 13, 2016 by Nuke

[Camacha]

1 hour ago, Nuke said:

i think the idea is repeated on/off cycles cause all the traces to expand and contract, resulting in metal fatigue that breaks traces. ive never actually seen this happen. computers fail for these *reasons:

The temperature difference between idle and load is much larger, so this will not make a difference. Also, a computer that is turned on all the time will wear out sooner, as electronic components do actually wear out over time.

[Laie]

9 hours ago, Majorjim said:

I never understood people leaving their PC on all the time. I shut it down when not using it so it's off 90% of the time. I even pull out the plug from the wall.

Originally the idea was, as Nuke said, that expansion/contraction would cause mechanical stress and yes, this will kill an IC over time. Capacitors, on the other hand, wear out from being hot. As best I remember, the idea was not that you should never-ever power down your computer, but do so only when you'd be gone for at least an hour or two. Anyways, that was 15-20 years ago. These days, with chips clocking up and down on demand, you won't hold a steady temperature no matter what.

But the OP's question was something different. When you "shut down" a Win8/10 computer, what actually happens is "suspend to disk": it stores it's present state to disk before powering down. When you power it up again, it reloads that stuff and you can continue where you dropped off the last time (that's default behaviour, you can change it somewhere). For all practical purposes it's much like the good old standby mode, or merely locking the screen. However, it takes a little longer and the box is actually powered down. You still have the benefit of having all your old windows open, all the browser tabs and the half-finished essay in the text processor. Very convenient.

The key question of the OP was: will it be a problem if my box is never properly rebooted from scratch, but only ever continues where it was? The answer is both straightforward and useless: "it depends". As long as everything is fine, there's no reason to reboot the system. Then again, a reboot doesn't hurt so you may as well slip it in when it suits you. And if you notice that your system is becoming instable over the course of a few weeks, you should develop a habit of rebooting the system every once in a while.

[Majorjim!]

Just now, Laie said:

over the course of a few weeks,

You leave your PC on for weeks?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Majorjim said:

You leave your PC on for weeks?

My Mac has been running constantly for a good month.  I should restart sometime...

[Majorjim!]

Just now, CliftonM said:

My Mac has been running constantly for a good month.  I should restart sometime...

damn.. Take that carbon footprint.

[Laie]

Just now, Majorjim said:

You leave your PC on for weeks?

My computer believes it has been running for a full month -- even though I power it down every night. I tried to explain it in the middle paragraph in my previous post.

[adsii1970]

I restart my desktop every 14 days. I've disabled the EnergyStar crap on it and when it is not in use by me or the family, I am running BOINC software for the Einstein project and SETI@Home.

The laptop gets restarted once a week, but when the screen is down, it is in standby mode.

The tablet is set to completely shut down when not in use after it has been in standby mode for two hours, or if I manually shut it down when I am finished with it.

 

[Majorjim!]

Just now, Laie said:

My computer believes it has been running for a full month -- even though I power it down every night. I tried to explain it in the middle paragraph in my previous post.

I've never seen that behavior on my machine before. I think I have windows 7 though.

 

[Guest]

25 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

I am running BOINC software for the Einstein project and SETI@Home.

Have you tried out Prime95?  That's the one where you use your computer to look for prime numbers.

[adsii1970]

Just now, CliftonM said:

Have you tried out Prime95?  That's the one where you use your computer to look for prime numbers.

No, I have not. Is that part of the overall BOINC project?

[Camacha]

5 hours ago, CliftonM said:

My Mac has been running constantly for a good month.  I should restart sometime...

Does it do anything useful? That is an awful lot of continuous power.

[monstah]

20 hours ago, Majorjim said:

I never understood people leaving their PC on all the time. I shut it down when not using it so it's off 90% of the time. I even pull out the plug from the wall.

The way I understood the OP's question, it was between a full shutdown and hibernation, right? I mean, my laptop isn't on, but if I press power it will boot the OS and restore from a session file, rather that startup the whole thing. I ask the same question myself, and from time to time do a full restart just because it sounds like the right thing to do.

[Green Baron]

 

Me again,

20 years ago it was a joke among PC users: "MS Windows ? It's an unstable mess, you have to shut it down every now and then or it'll crash sooner or later !".

Today people got used to it and expect Windows to crash, like they expect a good vacuum cleaner to make a terrible noise or it's not a good vacuum cleaner.

hehehe :-)

 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Camacha said:

Does it do anything useful? That is an awful lot of continuous power.

Oh, quite a bit.  Except it's mostly just me being too lazy to close everything I have open.  I've left KSP running for a full week before.  The reason I have 20 something hours on Steam is because the first time I ran the Steam installation I ran it overnight.   I don't actually launch Steam to play KSP normally though.

10 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

No, I have not. Is that part of the overall BOINC project?

No clue.

[Camacha]

2 hours ago, CliftonM said:

Oh, quite a bit.  Except it's mostly just me being too lazy to close everything I have open.

So nothing useful.

2 hours ago, Green Baron said:

Me again,

20 years ago it was a joke among PC users: "MS Windows ? It's an unstable mess, you have to shut it down every now and then or it'll crash sooner or later !".

Today people got used to it and expect Windows to crash, like they expect a good vacuum cleaner to make a terrible noise or it's not a good vacuum cleaner.

hehehe :-)

As I write this, I am looking at a Windows machine that has had an uptime of 131 days and counting. Better yet, after initial installation and setup, it has never been rebooted. Another sits next to it with 120 days, which only gets rebooted for maintenance. And yes, those machines do useful work

 

14 hours ago, Laie said:

The answer is both straightforward and useless: "It depends".

You have stumled across the universal answer in IT, to the frustration of many question askers With matters and machines as complex as these, it generally is the only proper answer, until people start providing more relevant specifics.

 

14 hours ago, Laie said:

As long as everything is fine, there's no reason to reboot the system. Then again, a reboot doesn't hurt so you may as well slip it in when it suits you. And if you notice that your system is becoming instable over the course of a few weeks, you should develop a habit of rebooting the system every once in a while.

Windows needs reboots for updates and updates are love.

Edited June 14, 2016 by Camacha

[stibbons]

My desktop machine dual-boots Windows 10 and Linux. It gets a full shutdown (not hibernation at all) when I'm not using it.

I have two OS X laptops, a work and personal machine. I put them to sleep when I'm not using them (just shut the lid), but will need a reboot, oh, maybe once a month give or take. I know it needs a reboot when the wifi adaptor stops seeing available networks on wakeup, or the machine wakes up and goes back to sleep again, or something similarly screwy happens. Shut it down, start up again, everything back to normal.

I haven't had to run Windows servers professionally for a while, but when I did they only needed to be rebooted after patching. They were no more or less reliable than the Linux servers sitting in the same racks.